Gender Self-identification
Debate between Kirsty Blackman and Warinder Juss(3 days, 5 hours ago)
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Kirsty Blackman
I completely agree. As the hon. Member for South Cotswolds said, there is still a legal requirement not to lie, with powers to punish people who lie when applying for a gender recognition certificate.
Across these islands, very few medical practitioners are competent, trained and working in this area. If we freed up some of their clinical time, the people who need gender-affirming surgery and treatment would get it far more quickly. The queue would shorten because those seeking a gender recognition certificate would not need a gender dysphoria diagnosis.
The Government could also choose to put other rules in place, and there are already other rules for getting a gender recognition certificate. The petition focuses on the gender dysphoria diagnosis, but it does not focus on the fact that people have to provide two years’ worth of evidence. The Government could still require that people provide evidence for every three-month period in at least the previous two years showing them using the title of Mr, Mrs or Ms, showing them using their new name, and proving that they have been living in that gender. The Government could still require all that while taking out the requirement for a gender dysphoria diagnosis, which would make things so much better for people.
As the hon. Member for South Cotswolds and a number of other hon. Members have said, what has happened around the Supreme Court ruling has made things even more complicated and confusing for people—it has not provided clarity. We are now in a weird limbo situation where huge numbers of pubs, restaurants and shops, which are just trying to do their best, do not know what they have to do. They have the interim guidance, which is frankly not very clear, the Court ruling and the Equality Act to look at, but they do not know what toilets they should be providing.
Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)
I have heard the argument that the Supreme Court interpreted the meaning of “sex” within the confines of the Equality Act 2010—I have inquired further into this as a member of the Justice Committee—and it is now for the Government to legislate further to protect trans people.
Kirsty Blackman
I am not a lawyer, but my reading is that the Supreme Court tried to work out what was in the minds of the politicians who passed the Equality Act in 2010. That is a difficult thing to do, because I cannot say what is in my mind right now, never mind 15 years ago. The Supreme Court tried to interpret that, and it came down on the side of saying that the politicians were talking about biological sex when it comes to single-sex spaces, for example. Actually, the Equality Act mainly focuses on things like discrimination rather than single-sex spaces, which are a tangential side mention in the Act.
My understanding is that someone can now only be discriminated against on the basis of biological sex or on the basis of their transgender identity, so not their transgender gender but their identity as a transgender person. That removes a huge amount of protection for transgender people. I am massively concerned, and I think the only way we will get clarity is if the Government step up and make a change to the Equality Act.